11 Answers

I knew 2 people who didn’t go with conventional medical treatment after diagnosis. One drank wheat grass juice, ate sparingly an organic vegan diet and passed in six months.

The other chose not to change anything and lasted a few months. Considering that they were suspicious of medical intervention to start with, I imagine they were diagnosed in late stages anyway, and were likely too far gone to treat.

I have known a lot of people who have chosen to go the alternative route, rather than radiation or chemo, and they’re still alive after all these years! Personally, I wouldn’t do chemo or radiation. I might consider surgery to remove a tumor, but probably would not.

Last week I heard of a woman (in her 40’s I think), who when she got the diagnosis of cancer, simply asked for pain relief, and nothing else. She died.

I’ve never met anyone who turned to alternative medicine when radiation and chemo failed, and lived. Their bodies are too depleted, and too poisoned to fight anymore.

@snowberry: I see more and more articles where people are trying non-medical treatments, not all of them sound preposterous. Do you know at what stages they were diagnosed? I am guessing it would have been pretty early for alternative therapies to be so effective.

I would be leery of “quack” doctors or treatments that propose to treat cancer. In the meantime, precious time is wasted. Yes, chemo and radiation are hard on the body, but at least there’s a chance (and many people do “beat” cancer with the use of conventional therapies like radiation and chemo). Trying alternative medicine for something like cancer is more of a gamble than with chemo or radiation, and a life is not something I’d want to gamble with.

Yes; a few of my patients have been through cancer and the chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and when they got cancer again, they decided not to go through that again and just have palliative care.

@canidmajor I met a man whose doctors at the VA diagnosed him with cancer and gave him a few months to live (of course they wanted to do chemo, but he refused). He left them and started going to my alternative doctor. Two years later he’s still around, and getting better all the time. I met him in our doctor’s office and we got to know each other a bit. This happened 6 months ago.

I used to work in a Cancer Hospital and one patient opted out of treatment( this was in the 1970’s then.
he moved to a Mountainous region for fresh air and clean water and survived happily for a few more years.
(Think Heidi movie).
But now Cnaer treatment is improved with pills instead of Radiation , and patients are treated in and outpatient basis (33 weeks).
Some are better but some are too far gone.